Sunday, October 31, 2010

Here's a little bit of granny chic for you all from a clever girl in Norfolk, featured in a recent Cote Ouest (click to link) October/November 2010. Just the place for tea in bed and storybooks or tickling (at length) small rosy-cheeked children. Red stripes are also featured rather heavily in this edition - if you are a red-stripes type of person! Oh I would also click to enlarge so that you can get the full delicious effect of those wallpapers!

Monday, October 25, 2010

So how was the weekend? I'm heading off in a slightly different direction, hope you like it. Since we've been doodling about the Bay Area for the past week, here's a little something I found in Berkeley a couple of years ago.

Excerpted from Squeak Carnwath, Lists, Observations and Counting, Chronicle Books 1996. Squeak Carnwath is Professor of Art at the University of California, Berkeley. Most of these paintings are slightly more rectilinear and the slight curving is a result of me photographing them straight out of the open book. What do you think? Website: here

Saturday, October 23, 2010

The French Tennis Federation, which holds the French Open at Roland Garros Stadium, adjoining these greenhouses (containing rare flowers and 100+ year old orchids), are mounting a campaign to acquire them. They will either replace them with tennis courts, or close them in, rendering them inaccessible to the public. Now I like tennis, but I like flowers better!!!!!! (And where else do you find greenhouses painted that gorgeous color of turquoise?)

If you feel these beautiful places should remain open and within easy reach of the public, please sign this petition and hurry. And tell your friends too. The decision will be made at the beginning of 2011. There is not alot of time.

And lots a pretty old girlfriends who stop by in rubber boots with dainties (no, what I really mean are giant monster brownies, and scones bigger than your head) for nibbling..... and.... a glass of wine.

When it's time to leave, he follows you to the door, reciting Poe's "Raven" as you go........

And suddenly "POP" you are back on Valencia St. in the Mission. And it's time to pick up some pasta and head home. .............That, my dears, is my Mission in the Mission. Accomplished. It went too quick, didn't it?

Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Hello to the Corner Viewers! Since a large proportion of this blog already consists of a fair amount of my vacation pics, (enough already, right!?) and because this week's theme was chosen by our itinerant Brit, Ian, at An Englishman Abroad, I thought I would share somebody else's idea of vacation pics.

These come from a book called "Our True Intent is All for Your Delight" (2002) and it is a book

of photographs taken at a number of England's Butlin's Holiday camps* in the 1960's and 1970's

by the Irish photography studio, John Hinde. Mr. Hinde (a descendant of the original "Clark" of Clark's Shoes), later handed over actual photographic responsibilities to the following:

Elmar Ludwig, Edmund Nagele and David Noble. The studio produced these highly saturated

very well-known English photographer specializing in similarly highly saturated and almost hyper-real

photographs of English people enjoying their leisure activities. (As here, in the company of the Queen's swans. Did you know that every swan in England has been declared to be her property? Now you do.)

Butlin's is still in operation as you'll see if you click the link above, but does not remotely any longer resemble these pictures, sadly. And most Brits just hop on a plane to Spain or Italy these days.

I keep hoping someone will open a vast cocktail bar in Honolulu or Los Angeles that looks like these pictures. (I would settle for San Francisco.) How fun would that be? Meanwhile the book, with an introduction by Martin Parr, who declares himself on a "mission" to share these photos with the world, is still available on Amazon UK and elsewhere. Just google: "Our True Intent is All for Your Delight". The publisher is Chris Boot Ltd., photography publishers in England.

Cheers!

* Holiday Camps were more like resorts with little cabins and large shared recreation facilities. You would see reference to them in movies like The Who's Tommy and in the English (shown on PBS in the U.S.) comedy show, Hi-De-Hi

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